Review: One More Shot

Lately, we’ve been trying to find documentaries on IVF but there’s not a whole lot of media out there on infertility. What? Doesn’t Hollywood think infertility is sexy?

A few weeks ago I heard about a new documentary called One More Shot. There’s not even an IMDb page, but the trailer looked great. We have a ton of Google Play credit saved up from the Google Opinion Rewards app, but it wasn’t available there. You can find it on both iTunes and Amazon, just not on Google Play.

Well, after a really shitty week for us, I figured it was time to “cheer” Mrs. Frugalcrib and myself up by watching IVF documentaries. This is normal behavior, right? Luckily for us, they just made it available on Netflix! Woohoo!

One More Shot

Here is the official synopsis:

“Infertility has never been revealed in a film like this before. Shot first person and told from the participants themselves, this is an unflinching look at the hope, loss, and humor that come from trying to start a family when you can’t do it the old fashioned way.

One More Shot is the story of Maya and Noah. With the help of a friend, they film all the highs (few of them) and all the lows (a lot of them) of their infertility journey in Los Angeles. They tried having a baby the natural way, and like so many others in the same boat, it didn’t work. Recognizing that infertility isn’t really something people talk about, they decide to make a movie out of it and put it all out there.”

On multiple occasions we see them interacting with their infertility doctor. Interactions I can only describe as cringy. Who the hell calls up a patient anxiously awaiting the results from her egg collection with a cheerful “How are you?” greeting, only to give negative news? And who tells a patient to “Have a great weekend” after just giving them the worst news ever. That must’ve been awful, as it was painful just to watch it happen.

From my (male) perspective it was interesting to see how Noah dealt with all the problems. In the early stages, it felt like, how do I say this, like he wasn’t “fully” emotionally invested yet. As the treatments kept piling on and the onslaught of failures kept coming, that quickly turned around. I see a lot of Mrs. Frugalcrib in Maya too. The pain, anxiety and stress.

Finances

It was also very cool to see the inner workings of an infertility clinic in the US. Needless to say, Maya and Noah had trouble financing the tens of thousands of dollars needed. Hell, at some point Maya’s parent’s even helped them out in a very unorthodox way!

This movie is about more than just IVF. They interview a couple of different people who tell their story on how they created their families. They did all have one thing in common though, they all spent a lot of money in the process (ranging from $50,000 to $250,000).

I can say One More Shot offers a very honest and heartfelt portrayal of what it is like to go through infertility and IVF.

I don’t want to spoil the movie too much though, so go ahead and watch it now!